Wake up call

India has to prepare for the situation when the US quits Afghanistan, says N.V.Subramanian.

By N.V. Subramanian (2 December 2009)

2 December 2009: Much has been made of the US president's phone call to Manmohan Singh on the eve of Barack Obama's much-awaited 1 December Af-Pak policy announcement. But a quick perusal of that policy should dismay the Indian government, and if Obama had given more than a hint of it to Manmohan Singh, the PM's spin masters would have quietened about that phone call, and not broadcast it as they have.

In the event, Barack Obama's 1 December Af-Pak policy presages defeat for the United States in Afghanistan. One does not have to be a congenital sceptic to say this. Neither at the commencement of war nor in the middle of it should a wartime leader announce the exit period. The only certain thing about war is its uncertainty. And without deferring to that uncertainty, Obama has announced with all the certainty of an academic war-gamer that the United States will quit Afghanistan in a maximum of eighteen months. Manmohan Singh should be profoundly concerned about the defeatist content of Obama's new Af-Pak policy, and diligently plan Indian countermeasures for after the US leaves Afghanistan.
What has Obama said that is so disturbing? The most unredeemable aspect is the eighteen-month deadline for US deployment in Afghanistan. On one hand, the US president claims to understand that the Al-Qaeda/ Taliban represent a clear and present threat to US national interests. He has admitted that several recent foiled terrorist attempts in the US have been traced back to the Al-Qaeda holed up in the FATA and Baluchistan badlands. A recent US congressional paper convincingly links the uncontained Al-Qaeda/ Taliban war against US and NATO forces in Afghanistan to the decision not to encircle and capture Osama Bin Laden and the almost entire Al-Qaeda leadership when they were trapped in the inhospitable heights of Tora Bora in mid-December 2001. By agreeing to a thirty thousand troops' increase after weeks of dilly-dallying, hoping thereafter that US allies would meet the rest of his Afghan commander, General Stanley McChrystal's minimum forty thousand soldiers' demand, and finally tying down America to an eighteen-month deployment period in Afghanistan, Obama has committed policy lapses no less than the George W.Bush administration's decision to permit the trapped Al-Qaeda leadership to escape from Tora Bora.
To be sure, America is financially stretched that prevents immediate massive escalation of the war (beyond the dire necessity of the McChrystal surge), and it is also a fact that the conflict is deeply unpopular with American voters. Partly the previous administration is to blame for diverting American attention to the uncalled-for Iraq war, which took the eyes off the intimate link between the 9/ 11 attack and the Taliban/ Al-Qaeda presence in Afghanistan-Pakistan. But the answer to that is sincerely to resell that intimate linkage to Americans, not to give in to American popular opinion when it is so evidently misguided and certain to imperil the United States further.
Most damaging for US great power status, and that inadvertently provides evidence of America's looming decline and isolationism, is Obama's explanation for "why our troop commitment in Afghanistan cannot be open-ended -- because the nation I am most interested in building is our own". Probably no US president in recent times has displayed such an inward-looking attitude, and that too in the most eagerly awaited presidential speech over the last few weeks. It is a signal to the Al-Qaeda/ Taliban patiently to abide an eighteen-month period of potentially Tora Bora-like scenarios in drone-targeted FATA and Baluchistan areas after which Afghanistan will be theirs for the taking. The Pakistan army-ISI backers of the Al-Qaeda/ Taliban/ Haqqani network will feel heartened with the announcement of the US exit timeframe, and accordingly, Saudi Arabia and China will make their moves in the region.
As for India and prime minister Manmohan Singh, it is time to confront the illusion that the United States will forever lead the world as a hyper-power. Barack Obama has frankly admitted that America cannot go on as before. Without saying so, he has accepted that the US is afflicted like the posthumous great powers with imperial overstretch. Such candidness is obviously disastrous for the United States, because, in a sense, Obama has raised the flag of surrender. But it is also a wake up call for the Manmohan Singh government. Unless India has its own plans for Afghanistan, Northern Alliance II or something more effective, it will render Jammu and Kashmir as vulnerable as it was in the summer of 1990.
N.V.Subramanian is Editor, www.NewsInsight.net, and writes internationally on strategic affairs. He has authored two novels, University of Love (Writers Workshop, Calcutta) and Courtesan of Storms (Har-Anand, Delhi).
Please visit N.V.Subramanian's blog http://courtesanofstorms.blog.com/ and write to him at envysub@gmail.com

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